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Imagining middle powers

Allan Patience
Published online: 31 Oct 2013.
To cite this article: Allan Patience (2014) Imagining middle powers, Australian Journal of
International Affairs, 68:2, 210-224, DOI: 10.1080/10357718.2013.840557
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Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2014
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Imagining middle powers1
ALLAN PATIENCE*
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Discussions of middle powers in international relations scholarship are

hampered by a lack of clarity about what the term ‘middle power’ actually
means. This has not stopped increasing numbers of states that cannot
claim great power ranking but resist being categorised as small powers
imagining middle power status for themselves in regional and global affairs.
In an attempt to shed light on middle power imagining, three concepts of
middle power are identified. It is contended that one or more of these
concepts influences the foreign policies of states ambitious for middle power
recognition in regional and global affairs. Identifying which concept, or
which combination of concepts, influences a state’s middle power imagining
may contribute to deeper understandings of the effectiveness, or otherwise,
of its foreign policies.
Keywords: Australia; imagining states; middle powers
Introduction
In the multipolar post-cold war world, increasing numbers of states are
ambitious for, or have had bestowed upon them, middle power standing in
regional and global affairs. As Cotton and Ravenhill (2011, 2) observe:
‘Australia is in the company of Argentina, Canada, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi
Arabia, South Africa, South Korea and Turkey, most of which have either
labelled themselves or been described by commentators as middle powers’.
Nonetheless, arriving at a clear understanding of this development is problem-
atic because there is almost no shared view on what the term ‘middle power’
means. Improved conceptual clarity is essential if the term is to acquire
theoretical utility. Addressing this need, this article first notes the ‘imagining’
of states in regional and global forums (Anderson 2006). State imagining among
middle powers tends to be more pronounced (even more fraught) than states
whose status remains relatively unquestioned in the framework of their
international engagements.
The article surveys the history of ‘middle power’ as a contested concept
in what is emerging as a rigorous debate about the role and significance of
middle powers in the international system. The article highlights three possible
*Allan Patience is a Principal Fellow in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. Email:
<allan.patience@unimelb.edu.au>
© 2013 Australian Institute of International Affairs
Imagining middle powers 211
conceptualisations (or ‘imaginings’) of what a middle power might (or should)

be. The first echoes nineteenth-century Concert of Europe thinking and may
be best understood from a realist perspective. The second (labelled here as
‘regionalist’) is open to a liberal-institutionalist analysis. The third (identified
here as a neo-Kantian development involving the exercise of niche diplomacy)
has constructivist overtones. This implies that the theoretical eclecticism
advocated by Katzenstein and Sil (2008, 109–130) is likely to be useful in
coming to grips with a state’s middle power imagining.
Imagined states
How states imagine themselves—as great, small or middle powers—and how
‘significant others’ (neighbours, allies and contenders) perceive that imagining
influences the making of foreign policy. Great and small powers are unlikely to
spend much time and energy on their imagining—their greatness or smallness is
mostly taken for granted in regional and global settings. On the other hand,
status anxieties loom large over middle powers. They have much to gain if their
imagining is recognised at regional and global levels, but they have a lot to lose
if it is not.
First published in 1983, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities demon-
strated the usefulness of a constructivist approach to understanding states
that are formed around a dynamic mix of ‘genuine, popular nationalist
enthusiasm and a systematic, even Machiavellian, instilling of nationalist
ideology through the mass media, the educational system, administrative
regulations, and so forth’ (Anderson 2006, 114). The forces he identified
facilitate the ‘linking of fraternity, power and time meaningfully together’
(Anderson 2006, 36) in shaping the institutions and policies of a state in which
people are able to imagine themselves writ large politically.
Anderson’s analysis throws light on how, in modern democracies, people tend
to absorb and reproduce the imagining of their state, conserving, revising and
adapting it through an exercise of agency as individuals, in civil society groups
or in political parties. At other times, they abide by what Ezrahi (2012, 83)
refers to as ‘necessary political fictions’. These are a multifaceted mixture of
symbols, rituals, customary and contemporary values, and traditional myths
and memories, which are all woven into the tapestry of modern identity (Archer
1997, 23–26). Ezrahi points to the ‘special capacity of the imagination to
conceal its role in framing the contents of our mind, in generating and
consolidating the images and the metaphors that give form and meaning to
our ideas and experiences’ (Ezrahi 2012, 13). Previously, Dixon (1999, 5) had
noticed that: ‘under conditions of nurturance … illusion distorts yet may also
enrich the reality to which it serves as an entrée and a way-station’. Ezrahi
(2012, 13) agrees: ‘Historically, actual freedom has evidently been advanced
largely by faith in illusions of liberty, imaginaries of independence, and
voluntarism, in false idealisations of past freedoms as well as utopian visions
212 Allan Patience
of future freedoms’. He refers to this as ‘humanity’s capacity to imagine and

historicize diverse forms of civic order’ (Ezrahi 2012, 37). He explains:
tacit social and political knowledge is engaged and expressed in informal yet
discernable commonsense ways of assembling the world and acting in it. It is
precisely because imaginaries (unlike theories) can bind together and bring into
relation diverse elements (such as fictions, facts, and emotions) that their effects on
collective behavior … are greater than those produced by philosophical ideas
(Ezrahi 2012, 37).
While the imagining of a state may embrace any number of things, if a majority
of its citizens does not share that imagining or is sceptical about it, or
antipathetic towards it—if the legitimacy of the imagining is lacking—it will
become problematic. Moreover, if significant regional and global partners fail to
respond positively to that imagining, it is more than likely that the state will not
only experience internal challenges, but will also struggle to establish what
Wight (1977, 153–173) referred to as its ‘international legitimacy’ (an achieved
status, which is even more important today than at the time Wight was writing).
Even if a state’s imagining attracts widespread support within its borders but
it is poorly received outside (for example, North Korea), it will not be accorded
international legitimacy, inviting sanctions and possible intervention (Caspersen
2012, ch. 1; Evans 2008). Where a state’s imagining does achieve positive
currency within and outside its borders, other nation states may try to emulate
it, thereby not only establishing or enhancing its international legitimacy, but
also transforming the circumstances of its region—or even aspects of the global
order. As Acharya (2009, 30) notes: ‘Local actors operating out of historically
formed normative contexts often redefine and reconstruct international norms
in accordance with their beliefs and norms’. Those beliefs and norms constitute
a state’s imagining.
Where a state has relatively limited military and economic capacity but is
nonetheless successful in having its imagining recognised and respected beyond
its borders, it may accrue degrees of influence and authority among its
neighbours that even reach into global forums. In the 1980s, Japan was often
admired as a model for economic development by other Asian states in the
context of the infelicitous ‘Asian values’ debates, holding out a possible middle
power role for Japan in the region (a role Japan failed to capitalise on)
(Tamamoto 2003). Canada is also often cited as an example of a middle power
in these terms (see, for example, Bosold 2010).
Nye explains that a state’s capacity to exercise this form of ‘soft power’
rests primarily on three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to
others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its
foreign policies (where they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority)
(Nye 2006, 11).
Scandinavian states, for example, acquired international regard partly for the
success of their social policies and in part because ‘Scandinavia seemed to stand
outside the bi-polar divisions of the Cold War’ (Hilson 2008, 178; see also
Rieker 2006, 301–314). Meanwhile, other states’ imaginings have resulted in
negative responses, both within their regions and globally—for example,
Zimbabwe under Mugabe. In short, if a state’s imagining is to lend it
international legitimacy in the medium and long terms, it requires authenticity
within and recognition without. A state whose imagining is based on ideological
fantasies or domestic and/or international incredulity will likely experience

awkwardness in its international relations, potentially leading to international
illegitimacy and to internal disruptions resulting in its possible collapse—vide
the Soviet Union in 1991 (Langley 2006; Werth 1999).
International relations scholars have tended to focus on great powers (or
superpowers, especially in the context of the cold war), on the one hand, and
developing countries (Third World states), on the other. More recently, that
focus has widened to ‘failing states’ and ‘rogue states’ (see, for example, Ghani
and Lockhart 2008; Patience 2012; Rotberg 2003). This emphasis on great
powers and/or problematic states has meant that middle powers have been left
to drift at the margins of post-cold war international relations scholarship.
While this points to a degree of scholarly negligence, it also suggests conceptual
confusion. It is time to bring middle powers in from the conceptual cold.
‘Middle power’ as a contested concept

Almost all discussions about middle powers begin with the disclaimer that the
field is conceptually confused and theoretically contested. Denis Stairs (1998,
270), an arch anti-middle power polemicist, wants to dismiss the concept
altogether: ‘Commentators on the roles played by “middle powers” in world
affairs … assume, or they try artfully to demonstrate, that patterns exist where
in fact they do not, and that causes are simple when they are actually complex’.
Some three decades previously, MacKay (1969, 136) had already noted that:
‘One weakness of the case for special recognition of middle powers in the
United Nations was that there was no agreed list, nor any agreed definition or
description’. Subsequently, Cooper, Higgott, and Nossal (1994, 17) observed:
‘Although the term middle power has long been used in discourse about
Australian and Canadian foreign policy in the post-1945 era, there is little
agreement on what constitutes a middle power in international politics’. More
recently, Ping (2005, 56) complained of a ‘proliferation of definitions [of middle
powers] with little reference to previous studies’. Underlining these views,
Ungerer (2007, 539) notes that: ‘there is no agreed definition of middle power
and middle power diplomacy’. And recently Behringer (2012, 16–17) has noted
that: ‘One of the reasons why very little comparative work on middle power
foreign policies has been conducted may be the lack of consensus on the criteria
for classifying states as middle powers’.
214 Allan Patience
This conceptual contestation has so far not produced noticeably greater

clarity. A quarter of a century ago, Wood (1988, 21–28.) proposed five roles
that he thought would define middle powers at regional and global levels: (1) as
a ‘regional or sub-regional leader’ (for example, Australia in the Pacific Islands
Forum); (2) as a ‘functional leader’, taking a lead on an issue (or issues) that the
middle power has expertise in, or heightened relevant capacity (for example, a
role that Australia, as one of the world’s leading uranium exporters, could play
more convincingly in regulating and monitoring the global uranium market);
(3) as a ‘stabiliser’, mediating between or counterbalancing powers that threaten

to destabilise a given situation (for example, Australia’s role in the United
Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia in 1992); (4) as a ‘free rider’ or
‘status seeker’, acquiring kudos by allying with a big power; and (5) being a
‘good multilateral citizen’ (or, in Gareth Evans’ [2012] terminology, ‘a good
global citizen’), supporting actions such as United Nations peacekeeping
operations. Wood’s attempt to bring a degree of conceptual rigour into the
field is admirable, but it is undermined by the difficulty of identifying a bloc of
states (or even just two states working together) that conform to even a few of
his roles. Some states manage some of these roles some of the time, but there is
no consistent pattern of behaviour in these roles by states that could be readily
identified as sustained middle power activity in regional or global affairs.
Subsequently, Cooper, Higgott, and Nossal (1994, 16–27) identified four
categories of middle powers. The first they call ‘geographic’—i.e. a state located
between two great powers or power blocs, an ‘in-between’ state like Turkey in
relation to the European Union and the Islamic states. The second is a
‘normative’ middle power, which acts as an honest broker or trusted mediator
in regional or global crises. The third is a ‘positional’ middle power—a state
whose power is relative to both great and small states. The fourth is what they
refer to as a ‘behavioural’ middle power—a state that is able to engage
successfully in ‘niche diplomacy’ in order to avert or ameliorate crises. They
note that the ‘behavioural’ middle power may act as a catalyst or an
entrepreneur in regional or global matters, and ‘take the lead in gathering
followers around it’; or it may act as a facilitator, ‘planning, convening, and
hosting … formative meetings, setting priorities for future activity and drawing
up rhetorical declarations and manifestos’; or it acts as a manager, ‘with a heavy
emphasis on institution-building’ (Cooper, Higgott, and Nossal 1994, 24–25).
Identifying empirical examples of middle powers is as hazardous as trying to
develop a precise conceptualisation of middle powers. Ikeda (2004, 263)
concluded that Canada, Mexico, Australia and Norway are middle powers,
largely because of their abilities to maintain degrees of economic sovereignty in
the face of neo-liberal globalisation. Ping (2005, 11) wants to augment this list
with Indonesia and Malaysia, after developing a ‘statistical taxonomy’ to
identify middle powers within regional groupings such as the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the
Economic Cooperation Organization. In Ping’s account, the empirical attributes

identifying middle powers include the size of populations, the levels of military
expenditure, the size and structure of economies, and indicators of development,
such as life expectancy at birth. Using statistical measures of these attributes, he
concludes that, in 2000, there were 14 middle power states active in global
politics: (in alphabetical order) Australia, Canada, Chile, India, Indonesia, Iran,
Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand
and Turkey (Ping 2005, 104). What is absent in Ping’s account is measurable
evidence of regional and/or global acknowledgement of middle power status of

one or more of these states. While assembling some noteworthy data on aspects
of socio-economic development and military capacity of middle powers, it is an
unfortunate irony that his work confirms Ravenhill’s (1998, 325) observation
that: ‘Such indicators have proved to be of almost no value in predicting or
explaining the behaviour of those states classed as middle powers’.
Painchaud (1966, 26) had already concluded that an empirical approach to
categorising middle powers in the international system contains ‘numerous
methodological difficulties which have led to its being progressively abandoned
on the scientific level’. Nonetheless, it has, he argues, a different and more
apposite utility: it has become an ‘ideology of foreign policy’ wielded by would-
be middle powers to characterise their foreign policy aims and content (ibid.).
This includes embracing the United Nations on the basis that the organisation
possesses the potential to promote collective security in the world. Putative
middle powers also wanted to see the United Nations become a fulcrum for
resisting great power (or superpower) dominance in global affairs, emphasising
the centrality of the United Nations as a vehicle for giving a voice to middle
powers amid the hue and cry of the cold war, while establishing a ‘niche’ for
them to act as mediators and peacemakers, ‘introducing notions of responsib-
ility and morality practically unknown before’ (Painchaud 1966, 34).
Painchaud (1966, 35) also argued that middle powers should seize the day
(within the United Nations and in other global forums) in order to address the
problem of underdevelopment, which he described as ‘the greatest menace of
the present time to the stability of international relations’. He had anticipated
that his native Canada would assume a leadership role in advancing the
normative thrust of this form of middle power diplomacy, but acknowledged
that Canadian middle power ambitions would be overshadowed by the cold
war, obliging Canada ‘to place itself in the position of being at the disposition,
more and more, of the United States’ (Painchaud 1966, 32). These cold war
limitations on middle power activism appear to justify the disdain of critics of
the ideology of middle power diplomacy. However, as MacKay (1969, 142)
pointed out just three years after Painchaud: ‘the cold war epoch is passing
into history; the bipolar system of international relations is giving way to a
multi-polar system’.
While a ‘scientific’ account of ‘middlepowermanship’ appears unattainable,
is there another form in which it can be presented in order to progress its
216 Allan Patience
imagining beyond ideology? Ezrahi (2012, 299) refers to ‘performative political

imaginaries’ that relate to ‘conditions in history in which societies are presented
with possibilities of choice’. In Australian foreign policy, the choice has mostly
been made in the light of the imagined necessity of close alliances with ‘great
and powerful friends’. Since the Rudd government, speculation has developed
about widening that choice to embrace a form of regional association in order
to confect a balance of power (a ‘Concert of Asia’?) in the Asia-Pacific region
(White 2012; Woolcott 2009). Meanwhile, Canadian foreign policy reflects that
country’s imagining of itself as ‘a mediator/integrator within the international

community’ (Michaud and Bélanger 2000, 225).
Post-World War II middle power imagining

In 1947, Glazebrook (1947, 307) predicted that the United Nations would
enhance the role of states which he believed were ‘capable of exerting a degree
of strength and influence not found in the small powers’. He called them
‘middle powers’, proposing that Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Argentina,
Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Australia and India belonged to this group within the
United Nations. He identified three factors contributing to their middle power
imagining: ‘their opposition to undue great power control, their growing
tendency to act together, and the influence they have individually come to
exert’ (Glazebrook 1947, 308). However, while separately and collectively they
might have expressed concerns about great power dominance in global affairs,
and even agitated against it, there is little evidence of their acting consistently
together. Their influence as individual states is questionable—arguably even
negligible. Holbraad concludes pessimistically that:
as long as two or more great powers dominate the states system, middle powers
are unlikely to receive legal recognition and gain international status—whatever
the nature of the roles they may perform and whatever the degree of influence they
may command, in non-post-war situations of international politics (Holbraad
1984, 66).
But Holbraad’s conclusions were formed in the shadow of the cold war. In the
multipolar post-cold war environment, middle powers may have opportunities
to achieve greater salience and influence than when Holbraad was writing
(Cooper 1997b). Stairs (1998, 281) disagrees, pointing, for example, to what he
sees as disingenuous middle power engagement in United Nations peacekeeping
operations. However, Stairs is too dismissive of past actions of middle powers
and he underestimates the potential for middle powers to act in the post-cold
war era. He ignores the immediate post-war history of middle power activism.
At the United Nations Charter conference in San Francisco in 1945, for
example, Australia’s external affairs minister, Dr H. V. Evatt, won international
respect while working with Canada and other ‘small Powers’ (Evatt’s words) to
try to curb the dominance of the great powers and emerging superpowers (Dee
2008). Canadian scholars are inclined to claim this as a uniquely Canadian
initiative. As Melakopides (1998, 38) asserts: ‘Canada … assumed a leading
position among a group of countries that came to be known as middle powers’.
However, Evatt’s election as the first chair of the General Assembly of the
United Nations signified that Australia was also recognised as playing a worthy
role in the global assertiveness of ‘small Powers’ (Reynolds 1996).
It is obvious that greater effort is needed to see whether middle powers can be
conceptualised more systematically. As foreshadowed earlier, a study of the

literature reveals that there are at least three ways in which the concept of
middle power is being deployed in international relations discourses, both
theoretical and empirical.
The Concert of Europe concept of middle power

The first concept of contemporary middle power imagining is firmly grounded
in a ‘Hobbesian’ view of international society, where the prevailing ‘anarchy’
favours big powers. Realism’s central focus on power in the international
system wielded by states highlights the relative powerlessness (or weakness) of
small states, which are vulnerable to the predations of bigger states. However,
some states—Bull (1995, 222) describes them as ‘secondary powers of major
importance’—may be persuaded to become ‘junior partners’ of big states in
order to avoid being preyed on by other less friendly big states or alliances of
states. Bull also describes these junior partners as ‘middle powers’. Junior
partners of great powers seek to take advantage of the security and associated
advantages their partnering offers, as well as basking in the glory that attends
great powers.
The Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century is illustrative of the strategies
confected by small powers to ally themselves with big powers. But the small
European powers’ alignments with preferred big power partners came at a price.
As Soutou (2000, 131) notes: ‘all European countries were involved in the
order, albeit with a more passive role for the “lesser” ones’ (see also Elrod
1976). Indeed, the small powers operated within limits aimed at ‘upholding the
existing European order against the forces of movement and change’ (Holbraad
1970, 205). One of the Concert’s patently illiberal purposes was ‘to fortify the
monarchical principle, and thereby to assure the unimpaired maintenance of the
social and political order in the respective states’ (Mowat 1930, 77). It was
hardly a progressive movement, though it managed to hold together a creaky
but enduring balance of power in Europe, especially from the Congress of
Vienna (1815) to the Treaty of Paris (1856). However, the whole ramshackle
structure finally came tumbling down with the outbreak of World War I.
Realists are inclined to accept—even applaud—that balance of power, despite
its creakiness and illiberal purposes, because it was the most stable order that
could be achieved under those historical circumstances.
218 Allan Patience
Reflecting the Concert of Europe’s nineteenth-century role for ‘lesser’ states, a

state that is intent on imagining a middle power role for itself will accrue
influence—even reflected power—through its alliance with a great power
partner as it shelters beneath that partner’s ‘security umbrella’. It is widely
understood that Israel’s security, for example, though fragile, is fundamentally
underwritten by its alliance with the USA (Ball and Ball 1992). In these
circumstances, smaller powers may even be obliged to shape their military
organisations—and sometimes even their political and economic institutions—in
conformity with the requirements of their big power allies. For example,
the USA’s guarantee of Japan’s post-war security came at the cost of
controversial clauses being written into the new Japanese constitution: renun-
ciation of the emperor’s divine status, the establishment of equal rights for
women, the deregulation of trade unions and legalisation of political parties
(including the Japanese Communist Party), and the insertion of the famous
‘war-renouncing’ Paragraph 9 (Dower 1999, ch. 3; Takemae 2002, ch. 13).
While Canada’s ambitions for middle power recognition may be over-
shadowed and even distorted by its proximity to the USA (Painchaud 1966),
it is also the case (perhaps perversely) that those ambitions are not infrequently
realised because of its closeness to the USA (Cooper 1997a, 53). In the latter
case, Canada’s ‘predicament’ is reminiscent of small powers within the Concert
of Europe: there may be costs of aligning with a big power, but there are also
pay-offs.
The taproot of Australia’s middle power imagining is deeply embedded in the
culture that typified the alliance-making of small powers during the Concert of
Europe. This has resulted in an entrenched Australian habit of junior partnering
in foreign and defence policy: first with Great Britain (in the context of the British
Empire) up to about 1942 and subsequently with the USA (Dibb 2007;
Goldsworthy 2002). The Concert of Europe model of smaller powers attaching
themselves to larger powers is the dominant, albeit implicit, model behind
Australia’s contemporary middle power imagining and, even today, it is reflected
in its foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific region. But just how much longer can a
nineteenth-century doctrine continue to be the major influence in Australia’s
middle power imagining? The contingencies associated with the rise of China in
the region are likely to bring new pressures to bear on Australia’s preferred form
of middle power imagining. As White (2010, 71) has noted: ‘if China keeps
growing, and it probably will, Asia will change. For Australia, foreign affairs and
defence policy are getting serious again’ (see also White 2012).
The regionalist concept of middle power

The second concept of middle power focuses on states seeking to cultivate
regional groupings in response to security concerns, improving trading networks
and responding to the pressures of globalisation. This style of regional
association has become especially pronounced in recent decades. ‘As the Asia-
Pacific region enters the twenty-first century’, notes Acharya (2007, 20), ‘new
developments in the regional and global security environment are challenging its
existing security architecture’. ASEAN is illustrative of such a regional grouping.
As Khong and Nesadurai note:
A ‘if we don’t hang together, we will hang separately’ syndrome operates to prompt
the adoption of relatively (for ASEAN) more intrusive institutional mechanisms in
order to deliver the joint collaboration needed to counter developments construed as
threatening to economic growth (Khong and Nesadurai 2007, 36; original

emphasis).
By contracting regional agreements, middle-sized states, especially, expect (or

hope) to gain access to power and influence beyond that which they would
accrue if they were standing alone in a multipolar and ‘disordered’ international
system.
It is an environment in which the looming global economy is overshadowing
local economies. Globalisation’s ‘information revolution’ is radically transform-
ing relations not only between states, but also between peoples across the world.
Moreover, state sovereignty is under pressure on a number of fronts as ‘the
boundaries between the “domestic” and the “international”… become increas-
ingly blurred’ (Fawcett and Hurrell 1981, 3). In response to these developments, a
number of variously successful regional organisations have been evolving, as
states seek to maximise the benefits of globalisation and minimise its disadvan-
tages by clubbing together. In addition to the European Union, ASEAN, the
North American Free Trade Agreement, the East Asia Summit and APEC might
all be seen as examples of this kind of regional coming-together by states great and
small, and states in between. Regionalism as a response (or reaction) to
globalisation and to other transnational threats (pandemics, global warming,
terrorism, refugee mobility) is one strategy by which a nation state may set in train
an internally and externally recognised middle power imagining (Dupont 2001,
13–32, 228–239).
In the closing decades of the twentieth century, Australia’s role (in collab-
oration with Japan and with encouragement from the USA) in forming APEC is
evidence of how a relatively small power (albeit a self-proclaimed middle power)
is both permitted and enabled to take the lead on an issue that would very likely
invite opposition or rejection if piloted by larger powers. As Ravenhill has
noted:
That the final push for APEC should come from Australia is not surprising given
Australia’s association with Japan in earlier initiatives for Pacific regionalism and
the perception that it was tactically preferable for the lead not to be taken by either
Washington or Tokyo (Ravenhill 2001, 82).
220 Allan Patience
More recently, Australia’s ambitious attempts to assemble support for an

Asia-Pacific Security Community (an ill-fated idea of Kevin Rudd when he was
prime minister) are indicative of this second kind of middle power imagining
(Woolcott 2009).
The neo-Kantian concept of middle power

Cooper proposes that:
The classification of middle powers as a separate class of countries in the hierarchy

of nations stands or falls not on their subjective identification but on the fact that
this category of actors engages in some kind of distinctive form of activity (Cooper
1997a, 7).
In the post-cold war context, Cooper (1997b, 21) argues that: ‘middle powers
have a greater necessity and greater opportunities to act skillfully and
quickly, and to do so together with a wide range of actors and institutions’.
In a similar vein, Behringer (2012, 21) argues that: ‘middle powers [can]
organize a coalition of like-minded states, international humanitarian
organizations, and non-government organizations (NGOs), who have come
to agreement on a treaty or plan of action that is effective for addressing a
particular human security problem’. Lovbraek (1990, 32) uses the term ‘like-
minded countries’ to identify middle powers and suggests that they seek ‘to
generate support for international economic policies which [are] more
responsive to Third World wishes’—a project of the 1970s that has dropped
remorselessly down the international agenda since the late 1980s. Evans
(2012, 3) adds a further dimension to a potential middle power’s imagining:
‘in being, and being seen to be, a good international citizen, both regionally
and globally’.
The emphasis in neo-Kantian middle power imagining is on the ‘soft power’
or related ‘smart power’ influences that middle powers acquire, either in
cooperation with one another as ‘like-minded states’ or by acting alone. ‘Soft
power’ refers to a state’s use of non-threatening modes of diplomacy (for
example, cultural or public diplomacy) to persuade other states to follow
its lead, or to offer those states support in conjointly planned diplomatic
ventures (Nye 2006; 2011). In the so-called ‘golden age’ of Canadian diplomacy
(1945–57), for example, the government sought ‘to increase the rightful room
for action by the middle powers’ (Melakopides 1998, 50). Canada therefore
gave prominence to the kind of niche diplomacy characteristic of twenty-first-
century middle power imagining. By building on this foundation, Canada’s
leadership has won international regard for such achievements as the Ottawa
Process (resulting in the passing of the United Nations convention banning
landmines in 1997) and the establishment and resourcing of the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which reported to the
United Nations in 2001 and whose report was unanimously endorsed by the
United Nations World Summit in 2005 (Bátora 2010, 107). We could add to
this record Canada’s diplomatic involvement in attempts to resolve the Suez
crisis in 1956, its support for smaller nations in the United Nations, and its
activist record in peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts around the world.
Similarly, despite a population size of about five million, Norway’s leadership
on human rights issues in China, Indonesia, Vietnam and South Africa
epitomises middle power gravitas also based on niche diplomacy, giving weight
to Norway’s ambition to be recognised as a twenty-first-century (neo-Kantian)

middle power. This is reinforced by the Norwegian government’s insistence on
maintaining contacts with the elected Palestinian government in the face of
Israeli, US and European criticism (Egeland 1989).
Conclusion
The central hypothesis of this article is that one or more of the three concepts of
middle power imagining it has identified will be present in the imaginings of
states that are perceived to be neither great nor small. As the world adjusts to
the realities of post-cold war multipolarity, more states will jostle to punch
above their weight, asserting middle power gravitas in regional and global
forums. While Glazebrook’s 1947 expectation that the United Nations would
bring middle powers to the fore has not eventuated, maybe the present
multipolarity will do so. Clarifying the three middle power concepts and
applying them to foreign policy analysis will lead to a deeper understanding of
the foreign policies of putative and actual middle powers, while also exposing
the flimsiness of the claims of other states that imagine they are middle powers,
even when the evidence suggests otherwise.
In Australia’s case, the most persistent influence in the country’s middle
power imagining is the Concert of Europe concept, with some evidence of an
increasing interest in the regionalist concept as it maintains its support for
APEC and an Asia-Pacific community (Chung 2007). There has also been
sporadic evidence of some neo-Kantian middle power imagining—for
example, in Malcolm Fraser’s opposition to apartheid in South Africa and
the Ian Smith regime in Rhodesia, and Gareth Evans’ role in the United
Nations’ peacekeeping role in Cambodia in 1991. Nevertheless, it is time to
acknowledge that the Concert of Europe concept has passed its use-by date
and is likely to become an increasingly counterproductive form of middle
power imagining, threatening to cement Australia’s image as an ‘awkward
partner’ (George 1998) in the Asia-Pacific region. A clarification of Australia’s
middle power imagining—a comprehensive reconceptualisation in fact—is
overdue.
222 Allan Patience
Note
1. My thinking on these and related matters has been improved by discussions with Yong Zhong
Zhu. Thanks also to Timothy Lynch and two anonymous Australian Journal of International
Affairs referees, whose suggestions were invaluable in revising the article.
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On: 10 July 2014, At: 19:22

Australian Journal of International

Imagining middle powers

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2013.840557

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Imagining middle powers1

Discussions of middle powers in international relations scholarship are

Keywords: Australia; imagining states; middle powers

conceptualisations (or ‘imaginings’) of what a middle power might (or should)

of future freedoms’. He refers to this as ‘humanity’s capacity to imagine and

(Ezrahi 2012, 37).

fantasies or domestic and/or international incredulity will likely experience

‘Middle power’ as a contested concept

This conceptual contestation has so far not produced noticeably greater

(3) as a ‘stabiliser’, mediating between or counterbalancing powers that threaten

Economic Cooperation Organization. In Ping’s account, the empirical attributes

evidence of regional and/or global acknowledgement of middle power status of

imagining beyond ideology? Ezrahi (2012, 299) refers to ‘performative political

country’s imagining of itself as ‘a mediator/integrator within the international

Post-World War II middle power imagining

conceptualised more systematically. As foreshadowed earlier, a study of the

The Concert of Europe concept of middle power

Reflecting the Concert of Europe’s nineteenth-century role for ‘lesser’ states, a

The regionalist concept of middle power

threatening to economic growth (Khong and Nesadurai 2007, 36; original

By contracting regional agreements, middle-sized states, especially, expect (or

More recently, Australia’s ambitious attempts to assemble support for an

The neo-Kantian concept of middle power

The classification of middle powers as a separate class of countries in the hierarchy

to Norway’s ambition to be recognised as a twenty-first-century (neo-Kantian)

the Asia-Pacific: Competition, Congruence, and Transformation, edited by Amitav Acharya

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